Scans_Daily

Bringing the crack since December 2003

Bloodbath #2

We saw the DC heroes captured by the newly risen Taker, all except Flash and Superman. Now it's time for a new group of heroes to get their butts kicked, I mean save the day.

One (well two sorta) New Bloods powers proved utterly key in this story, can you guess which tough guy saves the day?

18.5 pages from a 56 page story.

We open up directly from where the last issue ended as Superman escaped the Taker. He spots Flash and a few of the New Bloods and strikes up a chat.

Wow Edge, way to be an ass there! Steel's cool! (Would've been nicer to say original but whatever)

After this brief meeting Flash runs off following the trench hoping to find any other hero who escaped the Taker. Meanwhile we move to the Taker who has gotten an angry New Blood to fight he keeps blasting away at the Taker but damage seems to be negligible to the Taker.

As those bunch of New Bloods try attacking the Taker a few others watch.

Gunfire, Geist and Argus decide to team up a bit as their powers aren't all that useful for the most part separately.

As they keep trying to blast the Taker who is only getting annoyed another group try to slash the taker up close.

One of the Taker's tentacles grabs and knocks Nightblade and Razorsharp down from the hovercraft the group's using. Anima summons her Animus to grab the two.

Nightblade gets his neck snapped and seemingly dies, throwing Loose Cannon into a rage who chucks a large piece of rock injuring the Taker.

As more and more of the New Bloods start attacking the Taker it gets more defensive grabbing Sparx and trying to eat her. Mongrel and Shadowstryke both blast the tentacle in the hopes of freeing her and somehow their beams when intersecting become more powerful than each was separately hurting the Taker and getting him to release her.

As this has been going on Superman and Flash have each tried to help as bbest as they could without coming into direct contact with the Taker.

Flash following the trench of the Taker discovers a giant sack filled with the captured heroes, apparently the Takers external stomach. However he realizes he can't affect it directly as he can't get that close enough due to the Paralysis field it and the body parts of the Taker emit.

Superman has meanwhile been digging underground to find where the Taker's tail like body part reaches to discovering it's another energy source for it, an organ tapping into an oil reserve that's been helping feed the taker and allow it to grow and grow so he blows up the oil reserve so that he can stunt its growth rate.

I love how everyone Joe Public talks to instantly thinks he sounds like a gym teacher (since he is one).

Hook: Yes, I'm on a shiny dragon. Shut up. Chimera would totally be awesome at kids birthday parties. She can make flying horses (and everything else)!

Similarly more and more New Bloods show up to take a swing at the Taker.

Hitman meets the mysterious "Julia Simmons" aka Myriad and the two team up to throw a an extremely large amount of plastique at the Taker and ride off on Tommy's motorcycle hurting the Taker.

And so our hitmen part ways and Myriad never shows up again in this book or the DCU near as I can tell.

Back at the Taker's stomach Flash and his group go to free the heroes from the Taker. Hook gets grabbed by a tentacle but he slices through it.

And Jamm saved all the DC heroes! (Which further confuses me on his powers since the heroes were unconscious or perhaps even dead, maybe he could somehow co-opt their nervous system to force them to breathe and wake up?) Either way he's probably bragged about it since then. "I woke up Wonder Woman! And some other folks."

Geist and Argus are apparently using their eye visions to aim for Gunfire to aim where the two see weak points on the Taker.

This blast knocks the Taker out for a few seconds and everyone thinks they've won until he gets back up a second later.

Pax has a very fatalistic attitude doesn't he? And yay, Layla!

After some encouraging words from Superman Joe Public concocts a new idea on how to finish the Taker off after remembering how Shadowstryke and Mongrels beams interacted.

He absorbs the energy from all the New Bloods acting as a focus point and Anima in turn absorbs all the energy from him and gives it to her Animus with the idea that since all the New Bloods are pooling their powers it'll multiply like earlier. Well, they're right on the money.

"Let's Mix it up!" Animus gets into a megazord-esque battle with the Taker trading a few good punches.

And so our tough guy is revealed, the awesome Anima through proxy of her summoned Animus!

And so the Taker's finally defeated, but preparing to recover but the DC heroes are finally back up and running from getting woken by the Flash and co. from earlier and they deal with the Taker the only way they can think of, hurling it into the sun.

And so our Bloodlines epic concludes. The Parasite threat for now is over and the DCU has acquired a good two dozen or so of new heroes. But the event left the ending a little open so that if any future writer would want to bring in a Parasite they could. We also see in one story soon after this was published that had Pax tracking Parasites down one by one killing them getting his own revenge for his worlds fall.

And for those who think the ending is silly just look at how this event is compared to events now. It introduced a bunch of characters but left each Annual story as essentially a standalone, you didn't have to read any of them to actually appreciate Bloodbath but they were a cool way to check out stories if you found yourself liking one of the New Bloods.

The event also went out of its way to kill no established characters. Think of an event that's done that in the last few years.

AND while kind of funny the whole Animus and Taker battle isn't even all that different from how Brightest Day ended when you think about it. A giant mecha-esque battle between two beings with the express purpose of stopping the world from dying as several heroes power up one of the mecha-esque characters to push the tide into the heroes favor.

And it's fun to note that even now the event stil has effects on the modern DCU however slight given a parasite appeared in Batman and the Outsiders before Batman RIP and a new New Blood appeared in Outsiders just under a year ago.

And so I leave you with these questions. Who was your favorite New Blood? How'd you feel about the event?

Extras

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